Copyright: 2014 Ming Bu, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

The natural product sterol 5α,8α-endoperoxides are structural different from general sterols. These compounds belong to the group of oxidized sterol derivatives and contain a 5α,8α-endoperoxide bond in addition to the fragments characteristic of original sterols. Many researches have reported that sterol 5α,8α-endoperoxides have potential bioactivities, including antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-tumor activity, immunomodulatory activity, inhibitory hemolytic activity and anti-inflammatory activity etc. The review discussed the structures, properties, bioactivity and synthetic methods of sterol 5α,8α-endoperoxides. The natural peroxides are valuable sources in the development of novel bioactive agents.